Doklam: ending faux machismo

Fifth column

The campaign that led to Modi’s elevation as the prime minister of India created quite a few neologisms, stirred political tattlers and provoked praise and pillorying.

During one of the canvassing rallies, he made quite an unusual and direct reference to his physique – startling allies and opponents alike – which ended up becoming a potent tool of slander in the hands of his rivals. In late January 2014, Modi addressed a crowd at Gorakhpur, a well-known city in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous Indian state.

While strongly criticising Mulayam Singh Yadav, the then chief minister, he made a bizarre claim: Yadav couldn’t bring development to the province “because it requires a 56-inch chest like [his]”. Modi used the Hindi expression ‘chhappan inch ki chati’ that soon became shortened to ‘chhappan chhati’ in the political colloquial. Earlier, he had invoked his ‘sizeable chest’ to take credit for ambivalent claims of progress in Gujarat, the province he ruled for over 10 years in the past.

The Yadavs of UP – whose Samajwadi Party (SP) was in power – poured scorn over Modi’s uncouth muscle flexing. They likened him to the dacoits and outlaws of the Chambal ravines, North India’s famous wilderness that is known for being a heaven for all brigands and bandits.

“All those who crossed over to the ravines in Chambal used to proudly claim they had a        chhappan inch ki chati. They all had a very bad end,” Ramgopal Yadav of SP told the      Times of India. Sharad Yadav, the chief of a political conglomerate Janata Dal (United), goaded Modi for a clarification. “Are you in politics or in wrestling?”, he asked during a public rally.

A year later, in August 2015, Sonia Gandhi, the head of the Congress Party took a strong dig at Modi during an election campaign for his imagined machismo and faux bravado. Referring to the army deaths at the frontier with Pakistan, Gandhi accused Modi of showmanship and asked bluntly: “Where is that 56-inch chest”?

In the ongoing confrontation at Doklam Pass at the border of the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, where the Chinese and Indian troops are locked in tense hostilities for over six weeks now, Modi’s self-proclaimed 56-inch chest, which signified his fearlessness, has its lost appeal. His political party and the government seem to have been smitten by some divine gag. The silence seems quite intriguing given the fact that China has shown an unyielding resolve to escalate the matter through the continued threats of war amid repeated reminders of the 1962 military defeat.

The Indian military simply melted when China retaliated to the misadventure of the then Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who tried to claim territory through the so-called Forward Policy that saw India unilaterally erecting military installations to mark its territory without any urge to negotiate to settle the borders. For the last few weeks, the Chinese have been quietly massing up army hardware and mobilising diplomatic support as they continue to ask for Indian withdrawal at Doklam.

During his prime ministerial election campaign, Modi was projected as an uncompromising Hindu nationalist who would not only deal a blow to internal enemies (read Muslims) and the Pakistani terrorists (read Kashmiris) but also contain China – the bigger neighbour that weighs heavily on Indian conscience ever since the 1962 debacle. During his election rallies, Modi retched up his rhetoric against China by criticising its “mindset of expansion”.

In February 2014, while campaigning in Arunachal Pradesh, a province that China calls South Tibet and contests Indian control, Modi warned China to “abandon its expansionist attitude” as “the world had changed”. He continued his tirades even after assuming office. In August 2014, during a visit to Japan, he “deplored the expansionist tendency among some countries which encroach upon seas of others”.

The Chinese have been usually dismissive or overly guarded, even when the Indian side sought to escalate conflict through the media portrayal of the ‘Chinese incursions’ along the vast but ill-defined border between the two countries. However, during the current standoff, the Chinese have upped the ante, taking India not only by surprise but also provoking a sort of policy paralysis at the highest office.

S Jaishankar, the Indian foreign secretary, recently told a parliamentary panel that the Chinese stand has been “unusually aggressive and articulate”. This extraordinary situation should have warranted some public intervention or reassurance from the Indian prime minister. So far, he has chosen total silence rather than his ever-ready and off-the-cuff musings on Pakistan or Kashmir.

Postscript: Two years after he boasted about his chest, his ribcage seemed to have had experienced a woefully sharp decline. In January 2016, when officials at a university in Lucknow were told to design an       achkan for Prime Minister to wear at convocation, the authorities were given a 50-inch chest size for the tailor. That was a whopping six inches drop from the bragged dimension.

When Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, Sunil Kandolloor, a famous Indian wax sculpture artist, made his life-size wax statute for his wax museum at Lonavala, Pune. According to a report published in a leading Indian daily, the Business Standard (January 31, 2014), “Modi’s chest measures 44 inches – one whole foot short of his aspirational         chhappan inch ki chhati”.

In April last year, Madame Tussauds in London also unveiled a model. Modi, who was actively involved in the creation of his likeness in wax was delighted with the results, declaring that the artists were “exceptional at what they do”. The unveiling garnered a wide publicity. But sadly, there was no mention of the chest size.

Appendage: Last August, India exploded in a rapture of rhetoric following the fantastical official claims of a ‘surgical strike’ deep inside Pakistan that supposedly killed several Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri ‘terrorists’. This provoked Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the chief minister of the BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh province, to expand on the Modi’s claim, albeit with an artistic licence. “Modi’s 56-inches chest had now swelled to 100 inches,” he asserted with an unrestrained delight.

 Twitter: @murtaza_shibli